bad egg
5
5.6
- noun
- /bæd ɛg/
- Offensive
:
sinvergüenza
- She was a bad egg.
- one bad egg
- really bad egg
Like, I have met very few bad eggs, I feel like.
- Like, I have met very few bad eggs, I feel like.
Examples
-
Only a couple of bad eggs are to blame for these events, but it only takes one event to ruin a reputation.
Blog text (17) -
All it takes is a couple of bad eggs to spoil it all for everyone else.
Blog text (15) -
Guy seems like a real bad egg.
-
That boy was always a bad egg.
-
Every community has its bad eggs; I just had the bad luck of meeting this one.
Blog text (27) -
Terry, Chris is a real bad egg.
Fiction book (1995) -
Apparently he's a bit of a handful, a real bad egg.
-
But it was the later years of his Blazers tenure that caused Wallace to be labeled as a bad egg.
Blog text (16) -
Nevertheless, it only takes one bad egg to spoil the batch, and we've got dozens.
Blog text (20) -
It's easy to identify a bad egg in the team because of their dishonesty.
Synonyms
11
8.2
A person who lies and cannot be trusted
1
8.3
A person who causes trouble on purpose or acts dishonestly
A person who is very dishonest and cannot be trusted
Antonyms
How Dishonest
Surface Forms
Morphology
bad + egg
Although the adjective 'bad' and the noun 'egg' are individually transparent, the metaphorical use of 'egg' to label a person is not predictable from their literal meanings; a B1 learner who knows 'bad' and 'egg' would not reliably infer 'an untrustworthy or dishonest person'. This figurative, language-specific usage is idiomatic and uncommon cross-linguistically, so the expression is opaque to learners.
Etymology
The idiom bad egg comes from the image of a rotten egg in a basket, because one bad egg can make the others go bad. So, a 'bad egg' means someone who is 'untrustworthy' or 'dishonest'.